- Ubuntu command for finding out which users are logged in: who
[username]@[hostname]:~$ who
[username] tty7 2011-08-09 15:00 (:0)
[username] pts/1 2011-09-06 13:54 (c-98-234-53-135.hsd1.ca.comcast.net)
- what do the terms "tty" and "pts" mean?
TTY Definition: Teletypewriter originally and now also means any terminal on Linux/Unix systems. It also means any serial port on Unix/Linux systems.
PTS Definition: Stands for pseudo terminal slave.
The difference between TTY and PTS is the type of connection to the computer. TTY ports are direct connections to the computer such as a keyboard/mouse or a serial connection to the device. PTS connections are SSH connections or telnet connections. All of these connections can connect to a shell which will allow you to issue commands to the computer.
http://www.question-defense.com/2009/09/11/what-do-pts-and-tty-mean-on-linux-what-is-the-difference-between-the-two-terminal-types
- VNC into Ubuntu GNOME remote desktop
- make sure GNOME vino-server is running on remote host
Check that vino-server is running. Here it is process 1302.
[username]@[hostname]:~$ ps -ef | grep vino
[username] 1302 1220 0 Aug09 ? 00:22:03 /usr/lib/vino/vino-server --sm-disable
[username] 22988 22953 0 20:22 pts/0 00:00:00 grep --color=auto vino
Make sure the vino-server is listening on port 5900. Here is PID 1302 matches the port 5900 to the vino-server process .
[username]@[hostname]:~$ netstat -nlp | grep vino
(Not all processes could be identified, non-owned process info
will not be shown, you would have to be root to see it all.)
tcp6 0 0 :::5900 :::* LISTEN 1302/vino-server
unix 2 [ ACC ] STREAM LISTENING 8065 1302/vino-server /tmp/orbit-[username]/linc-516-0-25de38931f71d
- set up ssh local port forwarding to the local host
This forwards remote host's desktop the my local machine's port 5900.
- run VNC on local machine
The remote desktop for the user account of "[username]" on the remote host should appear in the VNC window. Yah, it works!
Tomorrow, onto deploying the RoR application to the laptop's apache webserver!
A note about vino-server
Note the vino-server is the default VNC server in Ubuntu. It is part of the GNOME desktop. It doesn't start automatically from bootup, and is only started when a user has logged into the account and started the GNOME desktop. Currently, Adrian has left the user "[username]" locally logged into the Ubuntu laptop, therefore, the vino-server is running for the user "[username]".
If the laptop was a monitor-less machine where it is not possible for a user to locally log into the machine, this workaround may work:
References:
- Ubuntu VNCServers https://help.ubuntu.com/community/VNC/Servers#vino
